If my posts had fewer subjects it'd be easier to come up with clever titles.

8/24

Night out at 5:19

I decided that I should go out to a bar. I was sick of sitting around watching TV and eager to try to meet people, and I'd seen on the thatsbeijing forum that a member was performing at a place nearby called 5:19, so I decided to check it out.

5:19 was quiet. There was the forum member playing guitar and singing rather competently, plus maybe 10 other people on the first floor. There were others upstairs on the roof, but I didn't know that yet. So I ordered a drink, much to my regret turning down the Bombay Sapphire in favor of the dramatically cheaper Gordon's Dry in my gin and tonic. I chatted with a few of the guys sitting around on some couches. They turned out to be Americans working in construction on the new US embassy, and were all pretty drunk. The conversation was much as you'd expect a chat with drunk construction workers to be, revolving around booze, women, and sports. I politely declined their invitation to go next door to dance with the Filipina girls, explaining with a straight face that I was waiting for a friend.

I chatted with the bartender and owner, Dave from Canada, who was running the business in his retirement. I asked him why he'd stayed in China after his decade-long contract with the mining company was up and after his wife divorced him, and he answered that he couldn't imagine readjusting to civilization.

I met the musician, who I'd previously chatted with in the online forum, and we went upstairs to the roof to hang out with some others. There he introduced me to an older guy from Montana working on the communications infrastructure for the Olympics.

I took the opportunity to ask how he felt about potential protests, which was apparently a red-button issue. It ended up a 3-hour, heated debate about freedoms, respect, and the 'greatest stage ever set on earth'. I thought for a while he was drunk, but it later turned out he was a recovering alcoholic and he'd been drinking tonic water. Anyway, we had radically different points of view. In the young and naive corner, I supported protest and free speech and the ability and obligation of individuals to change the world. He had a much more jaded attitude about the potential for change, and he also believed that the Olympics shouldn't be interrupted by dissent. His arguments weren't very good, but one that held up for me was that public protest would inevitably disrupt some poor athlete's proudest moment. He also had this weird belief that Olympics were about hope for the Chinese people, and that protesting would somehow betray that hope. I personally think that most Chinese see the Olympics more as an opportunity to make a quick buck by whatever means they can than they do a source of hope or pride. Anyway, he argued on the grounds that protesting against injustices in China during thr Olympics was somehow taking away hope from the Chinese people, which was just weird. By this point the bar had closed, which I didn't think they did in Beijing, and we were standing outside the front door debating. He finally misquoted Ben Franklin at me, saying, "He who sacrifices hope for security gets neither." (What?) When of course it's, "He who sacrifices LIBERTY for security deserves neither." So when I pointed his error out to him, trying hard not to jump up and down in glee that he made my point for me, we agreed to disagree and I went home for the night. I didn't meet anyone my age and I didn't meet any girls, but at least I got out of the house.

8/25

On Saturday I met my language exchange partner for the second time, this time at a Starbucks in Guomao halfway between our places. We haven't been very diligent about studying, to say the least. As much as I loathe Starbucks, it was nice to overpay for a giant coffee; I had no idea how much I'd miss the drink. So we chatted for a few hours, asking questions and taking notes. I managed to drop my pocket PC with my electronic dictionary off of the table and down 2 flights of stairs, but it survived intact, probably thanks to the heavy metal case that I've hated lugging around.

Bike repairs (Or, "No, no. Night time is when I fill the hole with water")

It was getting dark when I got back to the subway station where I'd left my bike. I had already put on my helmet and flashing lights and started riding down the street when I realized that my rear tire was flat. Fortunately, China has bicycle repair 'shops' on just about every corner They're really just 3-wheeled carts with supplies and a grease-covered older guy sitting on a stool, but they work. I remembered that only a moment ago I'd seen one across the street from where my bike was parked. Then, as I got off my bike and turned around, something clicked- those bastards flattened my tire. Furious, but trying to act cool, I walked my bike over to the cart and asked to use his pump, hoping they'd just let the air out. So I pumped up my tube and stood around for a minute poking at the tire. It was leaking, so I asked the guy how much it'd be to change the tube. He wanted 40RMB, but I talked him down to 25RMB ($3.50 for parts and labor), plus I get to keep the dead tube, which I'll throw away to prevent him from pawning it off on someone who doesn't know a new one from a patch job. When he took the tire off I checked it for anything along the inside which could re-puncture the tube. Assuming he's competent, he should have done that himself if he didn't know how the tube was damaged. He had a water bowl, so I pumped the tube up and slowly ran the length of it through the water until I found the leak, an invisible line of holes along the seam. It could have been a slightly split seam or it could have been someone with a needle poking my tire a few times. Who knows, but after he put my wheel back on I waited for a few minutes to make sure all was kosher before I paid him and left. I don't know if he actually did kill my tube, but everyone here I've mentioned the incident to thinks he did.

8/27-28

On Monday and Tuesday I got little done at work, or so it always seems to feel. I'm calling and emailing a bunch of people in the government and research institutions, trying to get information and set up meetings. I finally managed to schedule one with the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Science on Wednesday, but other than that I mostly got passed around from person to person and played phone and email tag.

Alessandro, one of UNIDO's permanent staff, has been really helpful about suggesting names and sending emails out through his account with his name on them, so that's been encouraging. We also have fun chats during the day on everything from his part-time job at the opera during college, where he chatted with Pavarotti and had to carry around large, 'dead' sopranos on stage; to articles in the Economist; to hiking and climbing. He's much older than I am, has a wife and a kid, but it's cool to have someone at work to interact with on a social level.

This week I was also tasked with writing the copy for the new UNIDO China brochure. I don't mind doing some of this kind of work for the people here; it makes me feel like I'm pulling my weight and it keeps them happy.

Exercise, plus what do do with my time

The evenings have been slow and long since my 1 month membership for yoga expired. I would have re-upped it, but I'll leave for Thailand before the full month and it seemed expensive to waste that time. As a result I'm going home earlier and still not doing much when I get there. I've been thinking about getting back into martial arts, so I've been shopping around. I found a well-regarded jiu jitsu school down in SOHO, about 15 minutes from work by bike, which I'll probably check out, but I realized that since I'm in China I should probably take advantage of it by learning something local. I've been asking around about taiji and kung fu teachers, but they're elusive. Most of the best teachers seem to be old guys who teach in parks, just not in the parks near me. They also charge lesson by lesson, payable in cash, and aren't cheap. So I'm looking, but I don't know if it's a practical idea.

The other fitness thing I've recently stumbled on is this yoga retreat outside of the city. It's not cheap, but neither is it too expensive- on the order of $100 for a weekend with food, transportation, accommodation, and classes included. It sounds fun, but the most amazing part is the setting; one location is an old Buddhist temple, another has property around a crumbling stretch of the Great Wall. It seems great, assuming I can handle that big a dose of hippie-ness in a weekend.

8/29

My first work meeting with a 'local expert'

After much debate I ended up wearing my suit to my meeting at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Science. I seriously wonder what people think when they see me walking around wearing a jacket, tie, and eyebrow piercing. I sort of like the contradiction, and I guess I'll settle for it if I can't dye my hair fun colors. No one in China dresses up; it's like casual Friday meets the Caribbean, with short-sleeve button up shirts all around for the elite businessmen and officials and track pants and polo shirts for the rest. It's sort of a shame that a country with such a cool sartorial tradition has settled on the lowest common denominator of Western dress. Even during the Cultural Revolution, although the clothing was uniform, it was unique and interesting.

I got up at 6:30 to make it to my meeting by 9, biking to work to collect my notes and drop off my computer, then catching a cab to Haidian, some 15km away, during rush hour. I got to read papers and jot notes during the ride through the morning traffic, so I understand the appeal of chauffeurs for people with money and stressful jobs. The taxi driver didn't know exactly where to go, but we managed to navigate there successfully, marking the occasion as the first time the Chinese GPS software on my pocket PC has been useful, and even then it wasn't while hooked up to the GPS. The campus of the institute, along with the rest of China, was gutted by construction, so I hiked in dress shoes over piles of dirt and under tin roofs until I found the right building.

The man I was meeting with, a Prof. Huang, had come downstairs to meet me when I called him to tell him I was nearby. We shook hands and headed up to his office. After the business card swap ritual we got down to business, but as an aside, how are you supposed to take the card you're accepting with 2 hands while simultaneously offer your own the same way? I assume you take turns, but who offers first? The actual trade ended up a weird tangle, but I don't think he cared. He spent a couple of years at Cornell, studying abroad as everyone here seems to do, so was probably lower key about some things than he could have been.

Prof. Huang is the head of biotech research at the institute, a scientist, not a suit. He was wearing a tie, however, so I just took my jacket off and the clothing thing worked out after all. I started by telling him about my research and my goals, and then we dove right into my list of questions. Unfortunately this whole exchange was in English. His wasn't great, but he knew the relevant vocabulary, so it went better than it would have if I'd tried to come up with Chinese for 'cultivars' or 'herbicide'. I ended up with some good notes, a powerpoint presentation with stats, and an introduction to a guy at the Chinese Center for Agricultural Policy whose papers I've read, so all in all it was productive.

When I got back to work I took my taxi receipts to the administrative assistant to figure out how to get reimbursed. She asked me to write my name and the purpose of the taxi trip on the receipt. "Just write, 'meeting'," she said. So I did, she added up the total for the 2 receipts on her calculator, asked if I could break a hundred, and handed me cash on the spot. How cool is that? In a country filled with red tape, in an organization known for bureaucracy, I got my taxi receipts refunded from petty cash out of a drawer in the assistant's desk.